This has been something I have written about before in my Trickey Thoughts blog, yes I am unashamedly self-promoting. It was fascinating when I reached out to the community on Facebook around this and software developers and people from large companies were really excited to see schools interested in this way of working. If you want to see how I used it in the classroom, the blog is here. It was great to have a refresher on Agile with Phil Baskerville, it left us questioning how do we put it into practice within the classroom? Many of these conversations started buzzing around the staffroom and continued with me chatting to my sister in law. This part of the blog is going to be a bit of dreamscaping. Imagine a blank canvas on which we could paint a different picture of our education system outside this industrialised model we have inherited. If we were to use some of the Agile methodologies what would it look like? Let us look at Scrum as outlined in the picture above. In this system we would call the product backlog the NZ curriculum. The team would be your group of students - these could possibly be students we mentor. This team would look at the things they have to do in a week, prioritise and plan a two-week sprint. What could this sprint involve? It could involve setting up specific lessons to cover knowledge deficits, it could be using a design thinking process with the aim to produce something or write and produce a play first studying a classic text. The possibilities are endless in essence. Daily Scrum meetings would ensure students know what tasks need to be completed with the use of Kanban boards etc (a 'to-do, doing, done' list). After the 2 weeks, we would have a potentially assessable product with the teacher tailoring assessment to the tasks. We would reflect and celebrate what has been completed what can be improved. Students would be truly empowered to follow their passions. A team would hopefully learn the benefits of brain breaks and could schedule sports into their team time. What if teams were selected around specific Vocational pathways with some fluidity around these movements? Integration and the break down of silos would be easily done. The Amnesty group, for example, could go about organising action and this could be tied into an assessment with them writing for a true purpose. I know that some of our teachers have seen this working in other schools and there are of course pitfalls along the way, but with an agile mindset, these can be addressed and learnt from. ~Duncan Trickey
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A Drama conference, if you choose your sessions appropriately, can greatly resemble what I imagine a hippy commune is like. Start your day with yoga; move into a session of ritualised stomping, group death, and reanimation; then conversely, head over to experience your birth as you exit your egg and blindly interact with a stranger. This was just in my first morning in Christchurch. Why is this relevant to you? Am I trying to get you all to experience Shaku-Hachi as part of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training? No. Although to be honest this was the most alert and present I have felt in ages. Am I wanting you to experiment with dissonant vocal sounds as you explore waving a scarf using four means of movement? No. To be honest that session, which was the last one of the weekend, was dreadful and I wish I hadn’t gone to that. Am I wanting you to explore the world blindly for the first time and have your only connection be with a stranger’s hand? No. Well, actually, yes. To be honest, I would love nothing more than to get the whole staff to try out this wellbeing exercise as it was truly extraordinary and the fact that afterwards everyone was able to locate their stranger was amazing and a bit woowoo. But I doubt I would get many willing to do that. Any takers, let me know. My Year 13s will be subjected to this in the coming weeks. What is relevant are the messages that came through again and again in these sessions about being creative, being strong, and being resilient. In order to further develop these key conference themes, the keynote address was delivered by Dr Viv Aitken an expert (unironically) on Mantle of the Expert. Aitken based her talk around ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion’ by Jonathan Haidt. A subject she noted she had considered changing given recent events. Dr Aitken entwined Haidt’s theories on morality and righteousness with the theories of the Mantle of the Expert’s creator, Dorothy Heathcote. Here is where you come in. Brotherhood is part of the Mantle of the Expert process; Mantle of the Expert being the approach where participants take up the specialist knowledge required to perform a task. For example, a student could take on the Mantle of being a Roman baker and discuss bread fraud (which, fun fact, was a real thing) as part of a group’s exploration of life in Roman times. As part of this Mantle of the Expert work, you pause before a moment to think of the people who have taken a similar step/action as you are about to undertake. This could be in the present in New Zealand or throughout history and throughout the world. You are joining that brotherhood. “All those who” is a phrase attributed to this work. Aitken tasked us with adding in the opposite view too. Could we also think of “all those who don’t”? Those who would be adversely affected or would be opposed to the step/action. This is a fitting consideration in our current climate. Do you often consider the worldview of others? In fact, how can you consider the worldview of others? Have you ever considered your own? Have you, as Haidt explores, considered your righteous stances? An acting process that can be helpful in this also comes from Heathcote. This is her exercise on the 5 Levels of Meaning:
It seems a very important time to consider our actions, motivations, models, investments, and values. In education, we are not teaching the views. We are teaching that there are views. Contested and contestable. Who are your brothers? Who aren’t your brothers and why? Does it really matter? Considering our brotherhoods (a term that the feminist in me is a little snarky about using) is an interesting and illuminating challenge. Because we are not immune to the viruses of hate, of fear, of other. We never have been. But we can be the nation that discovers the cure. -Jacinda Adern ~Lauren Mackay Engagement
It has been a hell of a year, but slowly I almost feel like I am back to being a useful human again. The mind wanders a lot when injured flitting across books, surfing the web, diving into Netflix series and even painting. Apart from the act of healing what was I truly engaged in? When I imagine engagement this is what springs to my mind.
Having a goal that is almost overwhelmingly absorbing. Yet we engage in so many different ways. Often we see these differing levels of engagement in the classroom as well as social life. Lessoncraft has been something I have been musing over for some time. I remember a few years ago at a staff function somewhere else getting a wee bit bored of the chat (as the company was nowhere near as engaging as the present company I have) and started to talk about what our best lesson was for that year. I wonder can you remember your first truly amazing lesson? ![]()
I remember some of the shockers both recent and in the past but what about the ones that just made you bubble inside? I cast my mind back to my S5/S6 (12/13) class of 2006 - a lesson on Stewardship. It started as a heartfelt rant (semi-planned) and flowed through to some student discussion, then writing and finally ended up with a destination using the book “365 days to change the world”.
The destination was a call to arms for the youth. If you agree with what you have written if you are passionate about this on Saturday I am spending the day cleaning a beach, join me or do the same which beach would you adopt. In more recent time, engagement has changed. The world has moved on and it seems to spin a little faster. I found a great tool to plan learning journeys on and can share it here.
If you listened to the 10 mins of that then I may have engaged you also. The lesson itself that day wasn’t amazing but I went into class buzzing with excitement about trying a new approach to the learning. It fell flat when the tech let me down. Luckily I was savvy enough to fix it myself as I had been too engaged in plan A to actually have a plan B. The 1 to 1 computer environment led to me being able to engage in meaningful conversation about what we were doing students fears and hopes for their futures. I used the steps in the journey as learning sparks for the students to think on and share with me. ![]()
In Mathematical Mindsets, by the wonderful Jo Boaler (I think PLT has my copy), she talks about low floor and high ceiling activities. The idea of engaging activities that students can all enter into and engage with but are able to challenge. Simple clicking and sorting activities with some room for deeper thought. Ideally it would have rolled into some extended writing or another suitable task.
My lesson outlined above wasn’t flawless but it was enough for me to proudly tell Steph that night after she asked me:
“How was work?” “Great! I have changed the world.” “How?” She asked. “I don’t know, I just think I might have.” ~Duncan Trickey I was asked recently by a PLG group to support them with finding some more information for them as they dropped into 'Learning' mode in their Spiral of Inquiry. What can we do, or how can we help to support students to tap into or discover their intrinsic motivation to achieve and strive for success? I have a few favourite sites I like to go to for ideas I'm looking into, or for inspiration, and one of these is Cult of Pedagogy (www.cultofpedagogy.com). Fortuitously, there was recently a post on this very topic that came up in my facebook feed. So I thought I'd share it here in the meantime while I continue looking into this subject. Click here to go to the original post in the site, or read what I've pasted from it below. Feel free to share what's worked for you, or any further questions you may have in the comments section at the end of this post. When I ask teachers what their biggest struggles are, one issue comes up on a regular basis: student motivation. You are able to reach many of your students, but others are unreachable. No matter what you try, they have no interest in learning, no interest in doing quality work, and you are out of ideas. For a long time, I had no solutions; the problem was too complex. I have had my own unmotivated students, and I never had any magic bullets for them. Still, the issue kept coming up from my readers. So I decided to do some research, to try to find what the most current studies say about what motivates students. This is what I found:
STOPPING THE BUCK: THE TEACHER’S ROLE IN STUDENT MOTIVATION The research on motivation wasn’t hard to find; it seems as if any teacher with an Internet connection and an hour or two should be able to learn everything they need to know about the topic. So where’s the disconnect? If we as a collective group of educators already know what works to motivate students, why are so many students still unmotivated? When I talk with teachers about the problem, I don’t hear much about the research. Instead, we blame technology: “Students are so distracted by their phones.” Or we blame the parents: “Parents just don’t want to be bothered” or “They don’t want their kids to fail/experience setbacks/take responsibility.” Or we make sweeping generalizations: “Kids today just aren’t like they used to be. They act so entitled.” Are we passing the buck? Maybe. It’s certainly easier to blame outside forces than it is to make big changes in the way we teach. Unfortunately, even if ALL of the above statements are true, we can’t do anything about those things. The only piece we really have control over is what goes on in our own classrooms. So let’s look at our own practice. When we set aside all the outside factors and just focus in on our time with students, how are we doing? How much alignment is there between our own instructional moves and the research on student motivation? I have put together a list of five questions we can ask ourselves to see if we really are doing everything we could to boost student motivation. To keep me from getting too preachy, I’ll do the exercise with you, reflecting on the years when I was a classroom teacher with middle school students. Okay, let’s go. THE QUESTIONS 1. HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR STUDENTS, REALLY? Multiple studies have shown a significant connection between student motivation and the quality of the teacher-student relationship. A good teacher-student relationship provides students with a sense of stability and safety, which sets the stage for more academic risk-taking. So what kind of relationship do you have with your least motivated students? How well do you really know them? Do you have conversations with them about the things they care about? Or have you more or less given up on them? My response: At first, I’m thinking I did pretty well in this area. I taught English language arts and my students kept journals, so I got to know them well. But when I think about my less-motivated kids, I’m not so sure I can say the same. The connection I had to Andre, one of my seventh-graders, consisted entirely of me getting him to make up missed work. It was all we talked about: the missing work, why he wasn’t turning it in, how important this stuff was for his future. When Andre saw me coming, he probably just saw a looming cloud of nag. We never really talked about the stuff that mattered to him. How we can do better: Just becoming more aware of the value of relationships is the most important step. From there, consider one of these resources:
2. HOW MUCH CHOICE DO YOUR STUDENTS ACTUALLY HAVE? Study after study points to choice as a major factor in motivation. Most of us have probably heard this, but we may not have fully embraced it. After all, providing choice can be messy, with students completing different tasks at different rates, making it hard to be consistent with grading. It can also mean a lot more prep work: If you’re going to give students three different options for an assignment, that means you have to prepare all three options ahead of time. Or do you? Isn’t that kind of prep work more in line with worksheet-oriented teaching, where students are doing low-level work that was largely prepared by the teacher? If students are engaged in more long-term, authentic, creative projects, it’s much easier to provide them with choices, because we aren’t constantly trying to provide them with new busywork every day. My response: I was pretty good about letting students choose topics for writing assignments, but I also required a lot of seat work as well. I wanted students to do their work at about the same pace, and I knew next to nothing about differentiation. Now I’m thinking about Matt, another one of my unmotivated seventh graders, who was incredibly smart. He sat way low in his chair in the back of the Gifted & Talented language arts class he’d been assigned to, way cooler than all the others, and he gave minimal effort. I used the same nagging approach I’d used with Andre, with minimal success. Now that I know more about differentiation and choice, I realize I could have had a conversation with Matt about letting him work ahead on some things. I could have allowed him, and his classmates, more input on the larger assignments I gave them. If I had given Matt a more active role in his own learning, he might have been more engaged. How we can do better: There are lots of ways you can allow more choice in your classroom without having to completely overhaul your way of doing things. Even adding a small amount of choice to what students already have is an improvement. Consider letting them choose:
3. ARE YOU RELYING HEAVILY ON CARROTS AND STICKS…OR JOLLY RANCHERS? Many, many teachers count on rewards (“carrots”) and punishments (“sticks”) to motivate students. And those who study motivation tell us that extrinsic reinforcement can be motivating if the task is something easy: If you’re trying to get students to clean up the classroom quickly, for example, offering class points toward a party can get them to speed up. But for tasks that require creativity and complex thought, extrinsic rewards actually reduce motivation. In your class, how much of your motivational approach is extrinsic? How often do you use grades, treats, privileges or punishments to prod students into doing something they don’t really want to do, something they have no real interest in? If extrinsic reinforcement is your primary approach, you may actually be killing off any natural motivation students might have otherwise had. My response: I score myself pretty low here. As a teacher, my classroom management was a mess until I learned how to control students with names on the board, extra credit, whole-class rewards for good behavior, and the ever-reliable bag of Jolly Ranchers. I did those things because they worked. But there’s a difference between getting kids to do what you want and truly, deeply motivating them. How we can do better: Try to catch yourself the next time you’re about to tie a challenging activity to a reward or consequence. When introducing a task, try focusing on its inherent interest or value, or how much students are going to learn, rather than on a separate reward or grade. Consider the difference in these two statements:
4. DO YOUR WORDS CONTRIBUTE TO A GROWTH MINDSET OR A FIXED MINDSET? What could be wrong with saying “You’re so smart”? It’s nice, right? It boosts their confidence, no? Well, it’s more complicated than that. Students are motivated to persist at a challenging task when they believe they can get better at it. That requires them to have a growth mindset, a belief that their intelligence and abilities can be developed with effort. Teachers can have an impact on this mindset with the things we say to students. So when we say “You’re so smart,” “You have natural math ability,” or “You’re a great writer,” we are telling the student it’s their natural ability that got them where they are. We’re contributing to a fixed mindset. And that’s not motivating. My response: When I was in the classroom, I knew nothing about growth mindset. I thought kids would feel great if I told them they were smart or talented. I can remember a conversation with Janae, a student who commanded the attention of her peers with ease but got into trouble a lot and did poorly in school. I remember pulling her aside and telling her that I thought she had strong leadership qualities, and that if she could just get her grades up, she had a bright future ahead of her. Yeah, that didn’t work. If I wanted her to “get her grades up,” I would have been better off noticing a well-constructed sentence or complimenting the way she got her group back on track during a cooperative learning activity, showing her exactly what kind of choices she should keep making to be successful. How we can do better:
5. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE YOUR CONTENT RELEVANT TO STUDENTS’ LIVES? I think this is another one of those principles that’s been around for so long, we assume we’re doing it more than we actually are. But showing students how the content relates to their lives really does make a difference. When students believe they are doing something authentic, something that will improve their lives or have some kind of impact, they are naturally motivated. So how are you doing in this area? Do you regularly provide opportunities for students to connect what they’re learning to the world they currently live in? My response: I got pretty lazy about this. Just like crafting a good opening and closing for each day’s learning, I often cut corners on making my material relevant. I was often much more focused on getting through content and tasks than I was on making it meaningful. I was pretty good about giving writing assignments on topics that mattered to them, but I don’t know how clearly I connected what they were doing to how it could help them. For example, with something like argumentative writing–I was probably more focused on “this is how you get a good grade on this” rather than on “this is how you change someone’s mind.” How we can do better:
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE The purpose of this exercise is not to beat ourselves up. It’s just a way of deeply diagnosing a problem most teachers struggle with. There’s a very good chance that the technology, the parents, or the entitlement are playing a role in what we perceive to be reduced student motivation. But there’s a very good chance that our instructional decisions play a role as well. So pick one area and start there. Make a small adjustment this week and see what happens. Share in the comments where you think you could improve, then come back and tell us what changes made a difference. To solve a problem as complicated as student motivation, there is no magic bullet; instead we’ll need a set of tools that we blend and refine over time. This is a process that will definitely be slower and more frustrating than a single, easy solution, but we’re professionals. This is our craft. We can do this. ~Jennifer Gonzalez - Cult of Pedagogy ![]() Music is what sparked my initial interest in Spanish. Thanks to Ricky Martin I wanted to learn every lyric to “Livin La Vida Loca” not only the English version but the Spanish one too. Therefore, when it came to deciding what high school to go to, one that offered Spanish was on the top of the list. I enjoy singing but I am not a gifted singer. I was in the choir at primary school and did have my debut as a soloist in my intermediate’s production of “The Jukebox”. However, after spluttering on the smoke machine during my big entrance of the play, I decided singing solo just was not for me. Until I became a teacher. Now at least once a week you can walk past my classroom and see my Spanish students and I singing a song to practice/memorise new content. Actually, nearly always after I have taught the senior students something new, they will ask me to teach them a song so that it sticks. Using song in the classroom is a really useful tool for learning. Songs are repetitive and catchy and if you can remember the tune, the lyrics generally just follow. The good thing is you don’t have to come up with songs yourself, I guarantee for whatever topic you are doing you can go to youtube and search it + song. For example I just searched “alliteration song” and came up with this gem below. Alternatively, you can search the topic + rap. I usually teach the song to them first before having a few goes singing along with the video. It will take a few run throughs before it really sticks. The songs the students love the most though are the ones that are to the tune of popular songs. I teach my students how to conjugate in the present tense with a song to the tune of Gangnam style (below left) or another one to the tune of Justin Timberlake’s "Sexyback" (below right). If after learning the song they forget how to conjugate, I just ask them to “remember Gangnam” and most can sit there and recall it.
If you want to take it to the next level, you can try inventing your own song with actions. I did this for teaching the students the prepositions. A few years ago, I used to go into the Spanish NCEA exams and read the listening passage (before they changed it to a CD). I distinctly remember a passage that was giving directions for students to follow on the map. It was full of prepositions and I knew my ridiculous song had worked as I could see them mouthing the lyrics to see which way they should go next. The ultimate would be getting the students to create their own song. Most students really enjoy it and they are concentrate on learning the lyrics so much that no one has ever complained that I am off key or sound awful (perhaps they are too polite). Whether they like it or not it is effective and is a great tool – not just for juniors but for seniors too. ![]() If that hasn’t convinced you enough then have a look at what my students have to say about it here: https://flipgrid.com/e11671 or watch some of my students singing here:
Let your inner Beyonce come out!~Abbie Law
We’re almost half-way through the year, and so this is a great time to pause and take stock of how far we’ve come and where to next. We started the year off with 1. The formation of cross-curricular Professional Learning Groups. The cross-curricular make-up of PLG groups is to ensure that everyone has opportunities to benefit from the rich and varied experiences of different teachers, and the different perspectives and approaches that other subject's disciplines can bring to a common challenge. 2. You honed in on a small group of priority learners in your class(es). You focused on 2-3 students in a class or across your classes who you thought should be your priority for whatever reason your professional judgement told you. The academic, engagement and wellbeing data you gathered from and about those students will have helped give you a clearer understanding of specifically what category of challenge it is that these students seem to be facing. 3. You shared and compared your data. In your group collaborative doc / template, or whatever format you’ve chosen to use, you’ve shared the data and information you have regarding:
4. You have found a common focus area. For many PLGs, you share the challenge of weaker levels of student engagement, so for the purpose of this example, I will use engagement as the focus. Because engagement is such a large abstract challenge, many of you have broken this down into types of engagement and shared the indicators or signs you’re seeing of a lack of engagement of these different types:
5. Brainstorming the signs you may be seeing of lack of engagement in your class(es) is a good way to narrow down to a manageable focus for yourself and your group. Remember, you don’t have to be a superhero. Pick the low-hanging fruit! Here is an example of one’s PLG group’s engagement brainstorm. The stars represent the indicators that they felt were the most significant / important ones for them to focus on. Ultimately, this group chose to focus on one sign of disengagement - the willingness to take (perceived) risks in learning. "How might we encourage students to take risks so that they feel comfortable expressing ideas, demonstrating engagement? " Remember that these three areas often blend into each other, so as this group tries different approaches, they may (or may not) find that some work on wellbeing may be a part of this challenge too. 6. Hunch forming. This is often the uncomfortable part of the inquiry process because this inquiry is about what WE can do DIFFERENTLY in order to improve learning experiences and outcomes for students. How might what WE’RE doing in our practice be contributing to this? It's also the fun part, where you get to brainstorm and share ideas with your teammates for how you might go about encouraging students to participate more, for instance, or help them get started with work more quickly. This is where referring to the 7 Principles of Learning resources and research might help you with ideas / strategies to try. (New Learning). [link to 7 P's here] ![]() 7. Take action! You have an idea for something new to try to see if it improves the indicators you’re seeing in class. Try it! Consciously watch and reflect on how it went. Record what happened in your collaborative doc. If it was a success, your team deserves to know! How do you know it was a success? (Checking) If it was a flop, you deserve help from your team to unpack why that might have been and to support you in your next prototype or iteration. You’re doing great! The inquiry structure or framework is not meant to make any extra work from what you would normally be doing as the reflective and conscientious teachers that you are. It is merely a guide for a way to progress through an inquiry process to ensure you can maintain momentum (which is always a challenge in the busy life of a teacher) and have a reference point to different modes of thinking for when you may hit a tricky patch or lose focus. Almost all of your PTCs will be ‘ticked off’ across the year through your inquiry journey and the recording and sharing of it with your colleagues. Discussing how it’s going with your appraiser before and after and observation lessons will also support its value and meaningfulness to you with your registration, your classroom teaching and your understanding of and relationships with your students and colleagues. ~ Rowan Taigel
![]() “Where are you from again?” A quick wave of panic rushes over me as I hastily assess whether I should say Rowtowrooah, or the correct pronunciation of Rotorua. Is it worth it to put in the effort ‘this time’? Will they know where I mean if I pronounce it properly or if instead I will receive a baffled look and a plea for me to repeat the already difficult word. (At which point I translate what I’ve just said to Rowtowrooah and am met with an expression of understanding.) The pronunciation of Te Reo Māori has consumed my thoughts since I moved to Dunedin 7 years ago. I was not prepared for the culture shock I would encounter after growing up in Rotorua and being surrounded by the culture, language, and traditions of Māori, as I naively thought at the time, all New Zealanders were. Turns out that is not quite the case. Not only is Te Reo Māori not as prevalent in other places, it is not as valued, not as common, and more to my point, not pronounced correctly. The ‘wrong’ way to pronounce Māori has become the right way and normalised because it is more common, because it is supposedly easier, and because for some reason some people are afraid to even try to say Māori words correctly. Hopefully I haven’t lost too many readers yet, since I know this is something that is often addressed, especially for teachers. (I’m sure you all remember the Kāpiti College student whose speech about the importance of putting in effort to pronounce Māori correctly went viral. If not, check out the clip below). I respect the fact that many people may not have not grown up with an emphasis on Māori language, especially in the South Island. I also understand that some people find Māori pronunciation difficult to quite literally get their tongues around. (As I admitted above, pronouncing Rotorua correctly every time is a conscious effort for me). I also respect that change is hard when you’re used to doing things one way your whole life. I respect these points, however I also think they are no longer that valid as excuses. Not when the same argument has arisen yet little effort has been made for change. Not when we are raising new generations of young people who are growing up in a society where appreciation of other cultures is more important than ever. As for pronunciation (which we deem important when it comes to English, French, and other languages taught in schools) Māori is actually a relatively easy language to pronounce (we already use many of the vowel sounds in English). Finally, change. I’ve noticed this is not something people tend to like the thought of… But after witnessing some valiant efforts in PLG meetings, PD workshops, and lesson observations, I know we are all more than capable because we are already changing all the time. Grammar Nazis |
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